Suspicion immediately fell on the Boko Haram terrorist network that has been threatening to attack the capital, in the middle of the country and hundreds of kilometres from its traditional base in the northeast, where it has killed nearly 1500 people this year. The militants’ violent campaign poses the greatest threat to the cohesion and security of Africa’s biggest oil producer as the country prepares for elections in February 2015.

Todays blast ripped a hole 1.2 metres in the ground of Nyanya Motor Park about 16 kilometres from the city centre and destroyed more than 30 vehicles, causing secondary explosions as their fuel tanks ignited and burned.

“I saw bodies taken away in open trucks,” said witness Yakubu Mohammed. “It is difficult to count them because the bodies were burnt and in pieces.”

A second witness, Suleiman Aminu, said he believed the initial blast came from a minibus parked near larger commuter vehicles, and that commuters who had queued up to board were the likely target.

“I can’t count the number of people that died. They took them in open vehicles. People were running and there was confusion,” said civil servant Ben Nwachukwu.

Security personnel belatedly cordoned off the area and a bomb detonation team was combing it for secondary explosives, a common occurrence in the region.

Shock...People gathered at the scene of the blast, which killed dozens of commuters at a busy bus stop. Picture: APSource: AP

Visiting the site, President Goodluck Jonathan vowed that Nigeria would overcome the brutal insurgency being waged by Boko Haram, blamed for killing thousands across the north and centre of the country since 2009.

The Islamists have carried out several previous attacks in and around the capital, including a 2011 car bombing at the United Nations headquarters in the city that killed at least 26 people.

Nyanya is a densely populated suburb of Abuja, filled with government and civil society workers who cannot afford the city’s exorbitant rents.

Boko Haram violence has cost more than 1500 lives already this year, but most of the unrest has affected villages in the remote northeast.

Last May the military launched a massive offensive to crush the Islamist uprising and has described Boko Haram as being in disarray and on the defensive.

Bus parks have been among Boko Haram’s most favoured targets, including multiple, coordinated bombings at a terminal in the northern city of Kano last year that killed more than 40 people.

Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, who has been declared a global terrorist by the United States, vowed in a recent video message to widen the group’s violence outside its northeastern stronghold.

“It affected quite a number of people because it was still very early in the morning and there was a lot of traffic,” according to the agency’s Air Commodore Charles Otegbade. He did not give a death toll.

There was no immediate claim for the rush-hour explosion though bus stations are a favoured target of Nigeria’s Islamic extremists.

The Boko Haram terrorist network claimed responsibility for a 2011 suicide bombing by two explosives-laden cars that drove into the lobby of the United Nations office building in Abuja. It killed at least 21 people and wounded 60.

Last week, Boko Haram suspects detained at the State Security Service headquarters in Abuja, next door to the residence and office of President Goodluck Jonathan, staged a failed jailbreak in which it is suspected that they had outside help. The agency said 21 detainees were shot and killed and two agents wounded in a shootout that lasted more than two hours.

The militants are blamed for attacks in northeast Nigeria that have killed more than 50 people in the past five days, including eight teachers living at a boarding school that had been closed because of frequent attacks on schools in which hundreds of students have died.

Boko Haram — the nickname means “Western education is forbidden” — has been attacking schools, villages, market places and military barracks and checkpoints this year in increasingly frequent and deadly attacks.

Its mission is to force an Islamic state on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of some 170 million people divided almost equally between Muslims living mainly in the north and Christians in the south.

The military has claimed that it has the extremists on the run with near-daily air bombardments and ground assaults on hideouts in forests and mountain caves along the border with Cameroon.

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